STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — As the coronavirus claims lives at a staggering rate and medical officials change how they respond to emergencies during the pandemic, the number of “dead on arrival” calls the New York Police Department receives has quadrupled, the head of the detectives union said.
From March 20 to April 22, the NYPD responded to 2,750 DOA calls — 114 of which were on Staten Island, data shared with the Advance/SILive.com shows.
The increase of DOA reports forced the NYPD to adopt guidelines in order to protect its detectives investigating those deaths, DiGiacomo said.
“We had to supply our detectives with special equipment, that being full body suits, gloves, masks and also face shields to protect them as best we could,” DiGiacomo said. “Along with responding to these type of calls behind every person dying, there’s a family, a mother, a father, a child, grandmother, grandfather. And now detectives are also there to provide some sort of comfort to the families, as we’ve always done in the past, and will continue to do in the future.”
More from the Staten Island Advance here.
